Restoring Order

This week, I worked on some of the surfaces that tend to collect clutter in our house. The pictures are of a little set of shelves that sit in the kitchen. It has many of our things from around the world, or at least around the country. The horses and mugs are were parting gifts from people in Browning, and they remind us of the reservation and our friends there. The Japanese teapot and cups were some that my brother brought back from his trip to Japan. The little buffalo (that you can't really see) on the top shelf is one that we got on our move to Montana when we drove cross country. It is from the oldest recorded Indian Village. The drum is from our trip to Gabon, and the basket is from some missionaries who were in Papau New Giunie (I have no idea how to spell that.) The other things are things the kids made or that we just like. These things have a lot of meaning for us and add some color to our apartment.
The shelves tend to be a good spot to put things out of Caleb's reach, but eventually those things need to go somewhere else!

I finished packing up all of the coats, hats and mittens from last week. Now we have two big plastic containers full of winter gear, and a detailed list of what is in each container.
Yesterday, was our first day off school between semesters. Stephen and I tackled our papers and files. That is another thing that tends to pile up very quickly. We wanted to get rid of as much as we could. We shredded anything with personal information, and took the paper to recycling.
We had several interruptions along the way. We stopped to help our friends who were moving out upstairs with their window cleaning, and say good-bye to them. It was sad to see them go, and it will be weird to have the empty apartment upstairs.
We also took a trip to the store. A local store was having a 20% off everything sale, so of course I had to go. I only bought 2 small plastic boxes for organizing.
It took a long time to get our papers sorted and organized, but it is a nice feeling to have it done.
Here is Caleb supervising the window cleaning.

Kristy cleaning windows.

David cleaning windows.

Stephen cleaning windows.

Caleb shredding paper. Don't worry, he was very well supervised.

There are more participants in Restoring Order at The Homespun Heart.